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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24175981">I'm a modern man (in like three different centuries at once)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ideasofmarch/pseuds/Ideasofmarch'>Ideasofmarch</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>There's a fine line between eccentric and absolutely bonkers [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Merlin (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>21st century merlin, Arthur Knows About Merlin's Magic (Merlin), Based on a Tumblr Post, Drunken Shenanigans, Gen, Golden Age of Piracy, Humor, Immortality, M/M, Merlin is a Little Shit, Pirates, Reincarnation, Tumblr Prompt, eccentric merlin, merlin goes feral, merlin was a hippy, tumblr the app is actually included</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 22:42:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,029</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24175981</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ideasofmarch/pseuds/Ideasofmarch</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>This is based on a tumblr post that i saw on instagram, in which Merlin has gone full cryptic and embraces the crazy immortal aesthetic. Basically just a little something on what Merlin did for those two thousand years while everyone else chilled in the lake with a dash of reunion at the end.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>There's a fine line between eccentric and absolutely bonkers [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1785826</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>153</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>1360</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>i couldn't help myself,<br/>apologies,<br/>IdeasOfMarch</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Contrary to popular belief, Merlin had not gone crazy.</p><p>Well, not exactly.</p><p>In his opinion, for a two thousand year old wizard with unparalleled power and a penchant for trouble, he was doing quite well on the sanity front. Though, given that there weren’t really any other immortal beings to compare himself to – turns out that vampires are not a real thing, by the way, he checked – it was impossible to say just <em>how</em> well.</p><p>He’d only been depressed for like six hundred years, and most of that was the middle ages so he can’t be sure if that was grief or just the general mood back then. Anyway, once the renaissance hit Merlin pulled himself out of his well of despair – and he means this literally, he’d sat in a well for a good fifteen years until someone had tossed a bucket down and clonked him over the head.</p><p>Seeing as how death didn’t really make Merlin dead as much as it gave him a killer headache, and being a mopey well monster wasn’t going to bring his friends back, there was nothing else for it but to live life to the fullest.</p><p>And if living life to the fullest made him a little more barmy then socially accepted, well, Merlin was used to not fitting in.</p><p>The renaissance was mostly filled with late nights in taverns and beers passed between shaking hands. Also, a shit ton of plays. He’d made friends with this one guy, Will, who was totally obsessed – the man churned out hilariously good plays like they were nothing!</p><p>It had been a really good few decades to just vent, you know?</p><p>By the time the enlightenment rolled around Merlin was as mellowed out as possible. It had also occurred to him that piracy was becoming very popular and, because he really enjoyed the look of those flowy shirts, Merlin had bought himself a boat.</p><p>He’d employed a variety of folks, paid them excessively with some of the gold he’d sealed away under Arthurs castle, and set sail. He had been, perhaps, the most unusual captain any of his men – and women, after knowing Gwen barring the fairer sex just seemed silly to him – had ever known.</p><p>Most of the time they just raided ships brining slaves over from Africa. Merlin would toss the captain and his crew over board, let one of his crew take over and guide the ship back to Africa. Slavery was, quite honestly, the most infuriating thing Merlin had ever heard of.</p><p>Once piracy started to decline in fashion Merlin had given his crew enough gold that their descendants ten generations down would be set for life, sank his boat, and made it a god damn point to buy and then free as many Slaves as possible.</p><p>The only reason he stopped steadily working his way through the colonies was because slavery was made illegal in the late 1800s.</p><p>He’d avoided England and America for the next five decades, instead choosing to hang out on a string of unpopulated islands somewhere at the bottom of Asia. Sometimes, he even ran into people! Mostly just voyagers who left when they saw him and his hut, but occasionally he got adopted into a village for a few years before they set off again.</p><p>Thankfully, he’d made it to mainland just in time for the 1920’s and hoo <em>boy</em>, those were some wild nights. Kind of reminded him of the start of the renaissance.</p><p>Merlin had missed the first world war, on account of bumming it on a remote island, but he’d been on the frontline for the second one – kind of. He’d moved to Germany right before it had started getting really bad, dyed his hair blonde, and started smuggling Jewish folks out of the country. He was known, in the underground circles of people who <em>weren’t</em> total assholes, as the go to guy for getting children out.</p><p>Thank god for silencing spells.</p><p>He’d also been subtly been poisoning the Nazi officers in as many places as he could. And it was so easy too – apparently, Merlin made a really pretty girl when he wasn’t pretending to be a hundred year old witch – just a few batted eyes and a smile and boom! He was the new assistant with complete access to all their food. It helped too that Merlin was using a thousand year old recipe and a poison that didn’t, technically, exist.</p><p><em>What</em>? A thousand years will screw with anyone’s morals.</p><p>After Hitler had kicked the bucket Merlin had decided to stay in Germany and help some of the people who weren’t terrible but got the brunt of the international communities anger anyway. He still had that veritable dragons nest of gold that he’d barely managed to dent even in his wildest years, slipping a few nuggets to the kids on the street was hardly a hardship.</p><p>Throughout, Merlin stayed very firmly away from the League of nations because… well, just because.</p><p>The next couple of decades were kind of boring, and Merlin let himself age. He became and eccentric old rich man, the kind that sporadically showed up at high society parties only to cause a scene and/or mysteriously cure an illness. He also stayed true to his long standing tradition of giving away gold to anyone who looked like they needed it.</p><p>He’d also spent some time fucking with America because he <em>had</em> popped over to Vietnam, just to check out the situation. And literally no one wanted them there except for the dictator in charge. He may or may not have stolen a bunch of information from the secret service and used it to help prevent innocent people getting hurt.</p><p>He didn’t feel bad about it all because healing the earth where those bombs had hit had been hell, some of those places wouldn’t recover for decades, even with his magic helping it along.</p><p>Then the 1970’s came.</p><p>And Merlin was the hippest hippy to ever hippy. He’d shed his aged skin for his twenty year old visage and went to fucking town. Flower power, man.</p><p>At the turn of the decade he’d joined the Stonewall riot. The guy he’d been sort-of-kind-of-maybe dating had dragged him along – not that he’d put up much of a fight, he’d spent most of the 1940’s in a women’s body and he was currently regularly making out with a guy, this was his fight too.</p><p>The 1980’s was spent with ridiculous permed hair and shiny, shiny pants. Merlin loved it.</p><p>It was also around this time that Merlin became aware of how many photographs and portraits there were of him. Computers were becoming a thing, and, well, there was Merlins face.</p><p>The first one he’d seen was a painting done of him and Will – who had apparently become a world renowned play write. They’d both been incredibly drunk and commissioned a local artist to paint the two of them standing on one horse, it was apparently a hilarious and well-loved photo – which also meant that any member of the literary community squinted at Merlin and insisted that they’d met before.</p><p>Then he’d caught wind that him and his pirate crew were featured in a history book. Unsurprising, given that they’d been the leading force on freeing slaves. But the portrait sitting proudly next to their description was his fault entirely. He’d insisted that him and his crew get one done before disbanding, then he’d had it copied and given one to each of them as a keep sake. He had the original safely stored away under Camelot.</p><p>There was also dozens of snapshots of his older cheerful self at high society parties, a few of him throwing up the peace sign whilst high as hell, and one very clear one of him at the stonewall riot.</p><p>So far no one had connected anything, Merlin only really had because he’d spent three months holed up in his apartment doing that.</p><p>The new millennium came with a terrifying new fashion that Merlin absolutely adored. He’d also decided to go to university and majored in history. It was both terribly easy and very frustrating for everyone involved because he was <em>there</em>! He might have been drunk and high but there was no fucking way William Shakespeare was straight.</p><p>His teachers loved and hated him in equal measures because on one hand, he had some fascinating titbits of information that actually made some of the wildest things make sense but on the other hand he absolutely could not explain how he knew.</p><p>Apparently “My friend Augustus explained it to me one time.” Was not a sufficient answer.</p><p>He’d also lost the ability to care about his clothing choices and usually threw on a mashup of at least three separate eras. According to his friend, Carla, he was ‘the campus cryptic’.</p><p>Throughout it all, Merlin had always set aside one week every year, except for like the entirety of world war two – he’d been a tad bit busy, to visit the lake. He’d been switching it up between his female self, his aged look, and his youthful appearance every fifty or so years so the locals didn’t notice anything weird.</p><p>He’d be going next week.</p><p>For the one thousandth nine hundred and seventy fifth time, Merlin was going to hang out in his lake house with three bottles of vodka and wait for people who wouldn’t show up.</p><p>Whoopie.</p><p>But those depressing thoughts were for next week, right now Merlin should probably focus on the fact that some blogger on a website called ‘Tumblr.’ had figured him out.</p><p>The kid had dug up dozens of pictures of Merlin, even including a sketchy drawing called ‘the man in the well’ that had him cringing. Merlin wasn’t quite sure whether or not to be actively worried as, seemingly, he’d been slotted in with various other celebrities on an ‘immortals list’.</p><p>It was very odd, according to the notes of the post people thought he was a pretty cool dude for an immortal. Which was nice. But they also weren’t really saying anything about his immortality despite the identical photographs and portraits. Which was confusing.</p><p>But Merlin had learned not to kick a gift horse in the mouth and simply prayed that none of his classmates from uni saw this.</p><p>-0-</p><p>A hundred miles away, sitting in an old lecture hall of Oxford, Professor Mumford stared at his computer screen in shock.</p><p>Suddenly, the last three years made a lot more sense.</p><p>-0-</p><p>Prior to his week at the lake house Merlin had accidently gotten wrapped up in a festival of some sort. What kind? He hadn’t the faintest clue. But there was alcohol and nachos and that was good enough for him.</p><p>He also might have accidentally fed that bloggers conspiracy a bit more. But that was <em>not</em> his fault. A couple of girls had cornered him right after he’d taken three rounds of shot with the man in the unicorn mask, and told him they’d recognised him from online.</p><p>“Oh yes!” He’d nodded empathically at the grinning girls, “I saw that just this week. Brilliant job that lad did! Took me ages to compile photos of me, and he had some I didn’t even know existed!”</p><p>“Wait,” One of the girls said, she seemed just high enough to believe in anything, “Are you saying your actually immortal.”</p><p>Merlin winked, “Nothings killed me yet, love.”</p><p>Then he’d done a round of shots with the girls, Taken several selfies with each of them, and given a two hour long explanation of the reasoning behind some of the photos of him. He’d gathered quite the crowd by the end of it, some man had even produced a projector from who knows where so he could project the pictures onto the side of a tent.</p><p>“And here I am at the stonewall riot with my boyfriend John. I was very high and very angry.”</p><p>A man in the crowd put up his hand, “Did you fight in world war one.”</p><p>“Didn’t even know it was happening, mate. I was on an island.”</p><p>“Cool.”</p><p>“What about the other world war?” A girl asked.</p><p>“Smuggled Jewish children out of Germany and poisoned Nazis.”</p><p>“Right on, man.” Some guy cheered.</p><p>The entire thing ended up attached to the bottom of that bloggers post. Most people were impressed at his ability to come up with tales on the spot, but Merlin kind of convinced some people that he really was immortal.</p><p>In the end Merlin left the festival with a headache, a pair of neon pink LED lined shutter glasses, rainbow suspenders that a three girls had helped him clip on, and a small cult following.</p><p>Thank god he had a week of blissful silence ahead of him.</p><p>At least, that’s what he <em>thought</em> he’d have.</p><p>Instead, when Merlin had walked down that familiar stone pathways, still buzzed as all hell with those glasses shoved onto his face to keep the early morning light from blinding him, he’d been met with a dozen confused men draped in chainmail and red cloth.</p><p>Fuck.</p><p>“<em>Merlin</em>?!” shouted a voice that he’d never forgotten, not in two thousand years.</p><p>Merlin pushed the pink glasses off his face and into his hair, stared at them, rubbed his eyes and then looked at them again.</p><p>He was fairly certain he hadn’t done any acid last night.</p><p>“Arthur?”</p><p>“Yes, you idiot. Where have you been? We thought you were <em>dead</em>! And what in gods name are you <em>wearing</em>?”</p><p>Yep, definitely Arthur.</p><p>Merlin couldn’t help but laugh, “Holy shit, it’s good to see you guys. This is so whack.”</p><p>The knights and Arthur stared at him like he’d grown a second head.</p><p>“Come on,” He gestured, “Lets get you to my house to dry off.”</p><p>None of his resurrected company voiced their agreement, but he could hear the tell they were following by tale clinking of chainmail behind him.</p><p>“Just so you know,” Merlin said as he unlocked his door, “I was totally prepared for your arrival like five hundred years ago, but uh, kind of forgot to maintain my shit, sorry.”</p><p>“Merlin,” Gwaine said, looking like he was about to burst into tears, “I haven’t understood a thing you just said.” And then he was drawn into a tight hug. One that was compounded by more and more hands with every second passed.</p><p>“Aw,” Merlin said, “I missed you guys too.”</p><p>The knights filtered out of the entrance way one by one after Merlin duplicated towels and fished out some clothes for each of them. Thankfully he’d gone on a drunken shopping spree nine years ago and bought things he thought they’d all like, now the clothes were a bit dusty but no worse for wear.</p><p>Finally, it was just Arthur and Merlin. Arthur was inspecting him, he could tell. Even all these years later he could read his king as well as ever. Merlin fought back a giggle when he noticed how Arthurs eyes kept flicking up to his hair, no doubt fascinated by the glowing pink glasses. He did laugh when the king grimaced at the rest of his outfit.</p><p>Merlin bowed and winked, “My lord.”</p><p>Arthur tackled him in a hug and didn’t let go, determined to make up for all the time they’d spent apart in the span of one tight embrace.</p><p>Arthur pulled back a little, just enough so that he could look Merlin in the eye, “I thought you were dead. When we woke up and you weren’t there… I thought I’d lost you. Again.”</p><p>“You did die.” Merlin mumbled.</p><p>“I’m back.”</p><p>“I know,” Merlin smiled, “Your not allowed to leave again.”</p><p>“I’m your king,” Arthur started in an exaggerated posh accent, “your not allowed to tell me what I can’t do.”</p><p>Merlin snickered, “Technically, speaking as a British citizen, no you aren’t.”</p><p>“<em>What</em>?!”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. ANNOUNCEMENT LADS!!</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Gather round, children, for i bring <em>news</em>!!</p>
<p>Ya'll are literally too sweet, your comments and stuff had actually made me smile so damn much and i just want to get it out of the way and thank you guys so much for lifting my spirits in this not so great time we're all having. Oh! and i also made a tumblr for my writing!! it's literally completely empty right now except for a bit of rambling on my part, but i would so be down for more interaction and making friends over there :D ( here it is if you wanna check it out: <a href="negligiblyfae.tumblr.com">negligiblyfae.tumblr.com)</a></p>
<p>ANyway, sappy stuff aside, i've decided to write about all the.... major events, you could say, in Merlin's life. The stories will go as following:</p>
<ol>
<li>the man in the well</li>
<li>Welcome to the renaissance</li>
<li>The golden age of Piracy </li>
<li>living it up on top (well, technically it was just below the equator but that's just semantics)</li>
<li>A spy in disguise </li>
<li>flower power plus disco fever equals a really bad headache</li>
<li>Modern cryptic </li>
</ol>
<p>After that i may or may not add another chapter to this here fic, where we explore Arthur and the knights getting to know the new millennium and the consequences to Merlin's little cult following.</p>
<p>Thank you so much for all the support but if i could just direct your attention to these links:</p>
<p class="clay-paragraph"> <a href="https://secure.givelively.org/donate/the-bail-project">The Bail Project</a></p>
<p class="clay-paragraph">• <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/donate/freeblackmamas2020">National Bail Out</a></p>
<p class="clay-paragraph">• <a href="https://secure.actblue.com/donate/bailfundscovid">National Bail Fund Network COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund</a></p>
<p class="clay-paragraph">• <a href="https://actionnetwork.org/groups/atlanta-solidarity-fund">Atlanta Solidarity Fund</a></p>
<p class="clay-paragraph">• <a href="https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/louisville-community-bail-fund/">Louisville Community Bail Fund</a></p>
<p class="clay-paragraph">• <a href="https://chicagobond.org/">Chicago Community Bond Fund</a></p>
<p class="clay-paragraph">• <a href="https://www.phillybailfund.org/">Philadelphia Bail Fund</a></p>
<p class="clay-paragraph">• <a href="https://nashvillebailfund.org/">Nashville Community Bail Fund</a></p>
<p class="clay-paragraph">• <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/bail-fund-for-justice-for-george-floyd-protesters">Dallas Bail Fund for Protesters</a></p>
<p class="clay-paragraph">• <a href="https://www.paypal.me/freethemall/">(F)empower Community Bond Fund</a></p>
<p class="clay-paragraph">• <a href="https://www.paypal.me/peoplesprograms">People’s Program Bail Out Fund</a></p>
<p class="clay-paragraph">• <a href="https://www.paypal.me/columbusfreedomfund?">Columbus Freedom Fund</a></p>
<p>These are a couple of bail funds where you can donate and help out our brothers and sisters fighting for their right to live peaceful lives over in America. If i was there i'd damn well be in the streets myself, but i'm halfway across the world and the best i can do is donate and spread awareness. I realize the protests have been going on for a while now, and some of ya'll may be feeling a bit of burnout. but BLM is not a trend, and we can't let the movement fade away. </p>
<p>Love you guys,</p>
<p>IdeasOfMarch.</p>
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